Year after year, Everton outperform much richer and starrier football clubs. Simon Kuper went to Goodison Park to find out why
Everton’s performance analysts want to improve their use of data. They are now picking brains inside and outside football for new insights. They are painfully aware, for instance, that nobody in their group has a maths degree. Still, football clubs may be more advanced than most corporations in using data to recruit employees. Only about one in 10 human-resources staff at FTSE 100 companies has a degree involving numbers, says Rob Symes, who made the documentary film Outside View on sports and data. Daniel Kahneman, the psychologist who won the Nobel Prize for economics, says in the film that a key to good decision-making is to let statistics “not humans make the final decision”.
